2. I believe the US government has overstated the death count by a factor of three. The LA Times reported yesterday that:

the administration has asserted that the government of President Bashar Assad killed 1,429 people, including at least 426 children, in an Aug. 21 attack on the suburbs of Damascus. British intelligence organizations said last week that they believed at least 350 people had been killed. French intelligence said Monday that it had confirmed at least 281 deaths through open-source videos, although its experts had created models that were consistent with as many as 1,500 deaths.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, generally regarded as one of the most reliable sources of information on casualty figures in Syria, says it has confirmed 502 deaths, including 80 children and 137 women. Rami Abdul-Rahman, a Syrian expatriate who runs the organization from his home in Britain, said he was shocked by the White House’s count.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s public assertions that moderate Syrian opposition groups are growing in influence appear to be at odds with estimates by U.S. and European intelligence sources and nongovernmental experts, who say Islamic extremists remain by far the fiercest and best-organized rebel elements.

5. Mutual defense pacts between Syria and Iran (and possibly Russia) risk escalating a civil war into a global war.

6. America’s Millennial Generation has already sacrificed its best and brightest for failed nation-building attempts in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Egypt. How many more maimed, scarred, and “dearly remembered” 20-somethings does John McCain want?

All in the name of advancing my agenda. I believed—and still believe—the liberty agenda is the best one. The only one for people live out the full potential of their lives, to own their own lives, and to leave the world better than they found it.

Times They Are a Changin’

As central planners in Washington (and other places) suck up more control over our lives, I have a harder time shouting “filthy rotten leftie” at liberals. Some of my very best friends are liberals, and they’re wonderful human beings.

But personal allegiances aren’t the only reasons I ‘m uncomfortable fighting the generic left.

More and more, it seems, the left and the right have a common enemy and a common cause. Look at a few recent examples:

The IRS attacks on Tea Party groups outraged smart liberals who realized it could happen to them

The NSA crimes against privacy chaffed left and right equally

Now, both left and right oppose Washington’s efforts to launch a war on Syria

A Common Enemy

People of every political stripe are waking up to the reality of a common enemy: the political elite.

The political elite know no party or ideology. It exists to maintain and increase its control and power over everyone and everything. Washington wants to control the economy, right down to the clothes you wear and the fluids you drink.

Political elitists are usually good people seduced by the siren song of political clout. The seduction envelopes and corrupts them. The song fills their heads with reasonable sounding arguments for transferring more power and privilege from the many to the anointed few.

The elitists work our minds like stage magicians, offering the illusion of control with distraction and fantastic stories that suck us in.

Morning in America

But now more and more of us—the plebes—are waking up. We’re seeing that the enemy isn’t the liberal on the left or the conservative on the right or even the “independent” who can’t make up his mind.

Our enemy is that political elite. Not the individual elitists, really, but the critical mass of that elite. Isolate them, and they rediscover their basic humanity.

And that’s what Morning in America will look like. An awakening. The terrifying understanding that power corrupts and accumulates. Then the comfort of realizing that there are more of us plebes than there are of those elites.

Finally, we’re stirred—compelled—to act. For our own humanity.

History shows that these awakenings suck to live through. But without them, life isn’t worth living at all.

P.S. If you don’t buy the Elite – Plebe dichotomy, Matt Drudge has an alternative in this tweet:

It’s now Authoritarian vs. Libertarian. Since Democrats vs. Republicans has been obliterated, no real difference between parties…